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Better Not to Know?

It’s Catholic Schools Week, and Little Brother’s school celebrated today with an ice-cream party for the kids. They do this every year. It’s a fun tradition.

But when you mix diabetics and ice cream, chocolate syrup and sprinkles (not jimmies–sprinkles) it’s not an easy tradition.

We didn’t want Little Brother to have to say no to the ice cream. He can have a reasonable portion (and maybe even a little bit of the toppings), but in order to “cover” that with insulin, we need to know how much ice cream he’s going to have. And that involves measuring cups.

I’m at the school, on average, a couple of hours a day. Today I couldn’t be there for the ice cream, so I had to do some of the homework ahead of time. I left our measuring cup, along with a list of the carb counts for the ice cream and toppings, with the nurse.

In the middle of all of that, I ran into one of the teachers, who is herself the parent of a diabetic (also diagnosed in grade school.) She gets it, and she has been very encouraging. Today she let me know that someone (and she didn’t mention names) was wondering why I was so worried about measuring the ice cream. She told me that she’d set them straight, telling them that because we’re new to this, we’re not ready to just “eyeball” portions yet–but we’ll get there.

I think I’d rather not have known this. I am in and out of the school, because my child is just not feeling confident enough to manage this without me. I am also a substitute teacher there. The whole faculty has seemed so supportive. And now, I guess, someone supports me to my face but judges me publicly behind my back.

Thanks for that.

I know I should be grateful that there is a teacher there who has my back. But all I can think about is how someone else in that school kicked me in the gut today.

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6 thoughts on “Better Not to Know?”

I suspect that most people’s experience is with non-insulin dependent diabetics, where “eye-balling” is just fine even at the start, and a misfire here or there isn’t an emergency. I’m glad you are not the one that had to do the educating at this moment, and so sorry you had to know that someone was clueless.

Hoping it was a comment made by a clueless PTA know-it-all parent and not by a teacher. Either way, it’s a pretty uncharitable remark. Shame on them. You are doing a great job of handling a difficult disease.

I dealt with the same thing the one year my peanut/tree nut allergic kid went to school (half-day kindergarten). Every time a parent brought in a treat for a birthday or party I would have to ask for ingredients, or to read the label of a package. I got eye-rolling, and even “what’s the big deal?” That’s easy to say when it’s not the health of your child being threatened. I eventually brought in a bag of treats my son could safely have, but it still wasn’t the same, and what is Little brother going to safely have when everyone else is having ice cream sundaes? Those types of experiences made it easier to make the decision to homeschool. I’m not suggesting that you do that, but I have to say it was easier in so many ways and that was a big one.

A Blast from the Past

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